We've always booked air separately. The advantage is that you can choose your airline and flight times and, if you are a mileage person (understand you're not), you can earn miles, upgrade, book a free trip, etc.

My advice is to check prices and times with and without Couples airfare. Use a search engine such as Yahoo Travel -- or various other travel sites. In some cases, it may be cheaper and easier to book air thru Couples. In other cases, you may find a better deal on your own. It usually depends on where you live, when you want to travel, and how long before the trip you book.

Be sure to check out the cancellation/refund policies for booking air via Couples or via an airline. Again, not saying either is better or worse; just ensure you understand your options and the potential penalties in case your flight cancels or you need to cancel for some reason (e.g., health issue).

We book it separately, our TA does it. Air Jamaica had a direct flight from LAX - MBJ for many years but it's been discontinued...see if you can connect through Phoenix ( via Ontario or John Wayne ) and take US Air straight into Montego Bay.

We are flying from Chicago and seem to find that only Air Jamaica offers non-stop flights and Couples web site does not offer Air Jamaica flights. If someone has found differently- let me know!

United does a direct flight but I think it's only on Saturdays so if you miss it, you're screwed. That's what happened to us and we missed a day at CTI and almost had to cancel the entire trip (had we listened to stupid United and not done the leg work ourselves).

We let our travel agent book for us. She always finds the best deals through Apple Vacations. They are one of the few groups that offer packages with direct charter flights out of our area. It shouldn't cost you anything to get a quote from a travel agent. That's how I found out they could find us the best deals, and most importantly, no worries as she does all the paperwork and details.

We booked separately, as the Couples site doesn't have an option for flying out of our local airport. We are on the Central Coast of California, flying US Airways to Phoenix, and they have a non-stop from there. 6 months and counting . . .

Melly - American flies non-stop from O'Hare to MBJ. At least on Saturdays they do. We have that route booked for this coming April. THRILLED at the prospect of not having to stop in Miami!!

I've never booked a vacation through the Couples site, but even with going with another site, I book air directly through the airline. It usually offers more flight choices as travel sites often only have certain blocks they can offer for sale. The airline will have all of the options. And, I like dealing with the airline directly rather than through a third party. Ran into a bit of a flight nightmare the last time we didn't go to the airline directly.

We handled everything ourselves, altho in our case it was more out of necessity than anything. We decided to cash in some of our miles with AA in order to get the free flight, so we pretty much had to arrange this directly with AA itself. Once that was out of the way we figured why not just finish it off ourselves, so we booked directly with Couples. No glitches whatsover.

Ron

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